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T-Mobile Brings Back Unlimited Data For All (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader shares a CNET report: T-Mobile is eliminating data plans for new customers -- and for current ones who opt in. The company is getting rid of all its wireless data plans and instead offering new customers one unlimited plan, T-Mobile said Thursday. Under the new plan, everyone will get unlimited talk, text and high-speed 4G LTE data. The company has also changed prices for unlimited. The first line will be $70 a month, the second line will cost $50 a month and additional lines will be $20 a month for up to eight lines with auto-pay turned on. The price is $5 more a month without auto-pay. For a family of four, the new plans will cost $40 a month per person. While this plan will benefit those looking for unlimited, it will cost more for people who have been subscribed to the lowest data plans. The current plan starts at $50 for 2GB of data per month. This means individual customers on its new plans will pay $20 more a month. But the new price is lower than the cost of unlimited right now. Today, T-Mobile customers who want unlimited pay $95 a month for an individual line.
Compare T-Mobile plans including the new ones at Wirefly to see the difference.
Compare T-Mobile plans including the new ones at Wirefly to see the difference.
Unlimited everything just $50 a month for the first line, additional lines are less. Had it for years, still has it.
I know they used to offer good roaming plans, covering Canada and Mexico...is that still the case?
Last time we had unlimited data plans, there were people who would tether hundreds of gigabytes a month (maybe using their cellular connection as a primary internet connection with wifi tethering). I hope "unlimited" this time does not have an asterisk.
What a bunch of assholes. Who would turn down unlimited data after paying for six gigs (their existing $70/mo plan)? And I bet they threw in more of that mandatory binding arbitration garbage people have worked so hard to avoid being drawn into (see also the T&C for "T-Mobile Tuesdays").
They make more money, and their overhead goes down because they don't need to deal with complicated plan management anymore, which saves them additional money.
Course, the customer will get screwed, but hey.
I liberally use however much data/text/minutes I want on Ting (same networks as T-Mobile) and my bill is never more than $30.
Honestly these unlimited plans seem like massive overkill; especially for T-Mobile because they already give you the data for YouTube and several music streaming services for free. What are people doing on their phones and tablets that's using several GB per month?
Do you really get to use unlimited data? Or do you get to use 5GB of data and then they start throttling you?
I'm currently on T-Mobile's pay as you go. $30 a month for 100 minutes talk, unlimited text, 5GB unthrotled data + unlimited throtled data. The only thing that _might_ tempt me to switch for more than double the price is if the data is _really_ unlimited and entirely unthrotled.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I was going to switch and priced out a 6 line account for $120 a month with minimum data on each line. under the New plan this would be $200, with the major difference being unlimited data for the old people on my account who don't care for it and won't use it. might as well stay on AT&T where it costs me $200 a month before taxes and phones
Their unlimited plan used to include 14GB of tethering data, now on T-Mobile One you have to pay an extra $15 for every 5GB.
The new plan also throttles video to "480p", you have to pay an extra $25/mo for them not to.
Basically, to match today's current unlimited plan, you'll soon have to pay $50/mo more for your first line, $45/mo more for a second line, and $25/mo more for a third and fourth line.
What a deal!
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
I switched to T-Mobile when I got my latest phone. I had an original, grandfathered AT&T unlimited data plan since the first iPhone came out, and switching saved me about $30/month already. So now it's going to drop again? Cool.
I'm also seeing LTE speeds from 70-80Mbps on the average, and the highest I ever saw on AT&T was 20 or so.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Metro PCS is the cheapo branch of T-Mobile. Generally works well, with decent coverage along major highways and in major urban areas. Unlimited everything has been $60 for ages; $40 gets you a 3GB cap with throttling if you go over (no overage charges, just throttling). Multiple numbers on one bill (family plan) get a $5 discount per number, and don't have to be all the same type (say, unlimited for the teenager, 3GB for Mom & Dad). Definitely an affordable way to go by U.S. standards if you don't need coverage in the backwoods. So is T-Mobile going to raise prices for low-end Metro PCS plans to match what they're doing with the Name Brand?
Few people use enormous amounts of data; if you don't want tens of GB, you are now paying $20 more per month per line.
Bingo! I'm in that boat. I have 5 phones on a family plan and we pay about $140. Now I would have to pay $200. We don't use all of our data now. Unlimited provides absolutely no value to us. So, we'll stay with what we have until they make it impossible to do so.
Then we will explore our options.
Course, the customer will get screwed, but hey.
The joke used to be, that it is not over, until the fat lady sings.
Today, it is not over, until the customer gets screwed.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Just from this announcement alone, T-Mobile would seem pretty compelling...
But T-Mobile has an even more massive advantage compared to most other U.S. carriers - free roaming data for overseas travel.
That used to be limited to 3G, where you could pay for an upgrade - while even that's plenty for using maps and email, all summer T-Mobile has been giving everyone high-speed data even overseas! I was traveling in France and the UK and Canada, and had LTE everywhere.... it was pretty fantastic. If you travel much at all T-Mobile is the only carrier that makes any sense.
I've been pretty happy with the coverage generally (I was able to download a 4GB file for work over LTE from a small town in Alaska) and you are just as well off cell-wise traveling as anyone that lives there as they partner with mostly the bigger carriers in whatever market you are in.
I know this sounds like some kind of sock-puppet account but I just have been so happy with being able to use data overseas just like I would at home that I had to share...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is not actually going to be the only plan option. Even if they stop offering the Simply Choice plans (which they say they aren't) the pre-paid plans still offer service much cheaper. Individual plans start at $30/mo, and you can get a family plan for as low as $100/mo with 2GB per line, or $120/mo with 6GB per line.
It was years ago when I signed up for T-mobile. They described my plan and said it included, among other things, international calling. I told them specifically "I don't need, nor will I ever use international calling. Remove that and I will sign up for your service." They said "no problem!" and I got their phone service.
Fast forward 4 years and my phone was stolen. I was having a great time that weekend at the downtown high-rise apartment of an amazingly generous and affluent acquaintance with quite a few other friends and acquaintances. Being preoccupied I did not notice the phone was missing for 2 days. Once I returned home and realized it was well and truly gone I contacted T-mobile. The conversation went like this.
Me: "Hi my phone was stolen."
T-mobile: "I see. Looks like you ran up over $900 in calls to Guatemala and Honduras over the weekend."
Me: "How can that be? I told you when I signed up for service that I would only sign up if you disabled international calling."
T-mobile: "Hmmm. Let me check. Oh, I see it here in the notes. Let me get you with a supervisor that can help you with that."
T-mobile supervisor: "Hello, since you have been a good customer we are graciously offering to discount your international calls you made by $50 if you pay in full over the phone right now."
Me: "Your associate just confirmed that I requested international calling turned off on my phone as a condition of purchasing your service, how are there international calls made on my phone and how am I responsible for that?"
T-mobile supervisor: "Your records do not show that. I can accept your credit card."
me: "...."
On subsequent calls with them they called my wife a liar. They called me a liar. They accused me of giving the phone to someone else to use, charging that person cash, and then attempting to refute the charges. They were rude, intentionally offensive, and intentionally provocative. In retrospect, I realize they did everything they could to keep me off balance and upset.
I was young and stupid and didn't contact a lawyer, go to small claims court, etc. I just didn't pay them anything, ever and considered strongly the use of fire to extract recompense for my time and frustration. Were this to happen to me today I would have someone's ass, it would be posted on the Consumerist instantly, there would be recorded conversations of them doing this, and they would be looking at a lawsuit.
TL;DR: My recommendation, no matter what they offer you, don't ever enter into a contract with T-mobile and never use them for anything more than a place to store rancid feces.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Who needs fiber or cable internet, when you can go entirely free with 4G...?
I'll probably stick with what I have then, since my primary need for anything over 2GB is usually tethering, when traveling sometimes I need to tether quite a lot... I used to be under some plan where the tethering was limited to 5GB but there was not even an option to extend that if you ran out! Now whatever plan I'm on doesn't seem to care how much I tether, it all comes out of my data pool... with the data carryover it's almost as good as unlimited for me, I have something like 20GB extra data to draw on if I really need to.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
and ended up on Verizon a week ago. Live just north of Houston and T-Mobile sucks for me, even with high-end handsets like a Samsung Galaxy S7. Ditto AT&T, which my wife uses. She loses signal at least a couple of times a week. We live in an area saturated with cell towers. CDMA just works better for glass and metal buildings and if you travel rural routes, which I do frequently.
Going to Verizon a week ago, I have not lost a signal once. I also got an arguably better phone, the Moto Z Force Droid.
Today, it is not over, until the customer gets screwed.
I find, your use of, commas, disturbing.
Be careful with auto-pay. I just ran into a huge drawback of these auto-pay systems when my credit card company issued me a new card because they thought the old card's number might've been stolen.
Unfortunately, they deactivated my old card just before the auto-pay for my cable and phone bill was set to charge. They tried to charge the old card, and the payment failed. That's when I learned that these auto-pay systems will try to charge your card on the last day to pay your bill. My phone company was pretty cool about it and let me just pay it with the new card. But my cable company was a jerk about it and charged me a $25 late payment fee.
I searched and asked, but apparently there is no way to auto-pay before the due date, to give yourself some time before the due date to fix things if a glitch like this happens again. I've petitioned with the cable company to have the late fee removed since I've never made a late payment before, and in fact when I received a mailed invoice I usually paid the day I received the bill. But I may end up just going back to a mailed invoice with them and paying it manually since their auto-pay system is decidedly less convenient than a mailed invoice.
T-mobile is thinking of the big picture, and shuffling their costs/revenue around to best respond to what the masses are doing massively.
Which is to say normals and casuals slurping streaming without a thought, bloating half the landline tubes and probably lots of the air. Then they get mediocre video quality anyway, and God-awful shows because no taste.
If it wasn't clear earlier, I can't blame providers for just reacting to the meta in their best interests. And I don't immediately blame plebs for acting as they please. But if the rest of us start to get dragged down as a result, that's different, I suddenly have a lot of incentive to start bashing streamers for what they're constantly doing on "my" internets.
He says stupid shit like it is $40 per line, referring to 70+50+20+20 dollars pricing for a 4 member family plan. The people with 2 kids hardly have any time to answer a call, let alone binge watching netflix or playing games on their phones. The people who do that stuff is either a single person with not much to do, or a newly coupled quasi-family, whose main line of entertainment is watching movies and other stuff off the net. Legere is making baseless assumptions. My MetroPCS $60/month unlimited plan is $10 beeter than TMO's $70 plan for a single phone plan. And they use the same fricken network.
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
Appears not to affect prepaid. Prepaid for mobile hotspot data-only is still $20 for unlimited LTE data.
https://fi.google.com/about/plan/
Slashdot didn't run my article about the fact that T-Moble does not offer Lifeline credit in California.
https://slashdot.org/submissio...
And not, T-Mobile does this crap.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
I'm not sure I like the fact that this plan seems to be replacing all of the other data packages for new customers. Personally, I don't go through more than 1.5GB or so of data per month on my phone because I'm usually on a wi-fi connection anyplace where I'm downloading updates to apps or what-not.
I get that I'm allowed to keep my current plan, which is exactly what I'm going to do. But especially with all of the streaming audio and video services T-Mobile agrees to let you use without them counting against your data usage, it's actually rather difficult to go over my monthly data allotment. And I'm paying $20/month less than the new unlimited package costs.
Bigots who stubbornly believe fiber is better just because. Meanwhile in reality you could tether your entire home network to a cheap burner phone on unlimited LTE.
I've been using the same $35/mo plan with Cricket since back when they were AIO. Unlimited talk, unlimited text and 2.5GB high speed data (plus throttled-back-to-the-stone-age unlimited). T-Mobile has nothing that can touch it, coverage (Cricket uses AT&T's towers) or price-wise.
Also, it seems Cricket is also beating T-Mobile's unlimited pricing if all you want is a single line. They're offering unlimited data for $65/mo, with autopay. Yay for competition.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
No, because Metro PCS doesn't include roaming in partner networks or in Canada and Mexico, like T-Mo does. The savings come from the vastly reduced coverage.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
What's over? With both cell providers and ISPs in the US the rule seems to generally be that the customer gets screwed right from the start, and keeps getting screwed until they decide to switch providers and get screwed by someone else for a while.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Verizon acts like they are doing you a big favor by letting you use their network. I switched from Verizon to T-Mobile because I wanted to be able to use Google Nexus devices. (My last Verizon phone was a Samsung Galaxy Nexus, but Google got fed up with Verizon over how they mishandled the Galaxy Nexus so there aren't any new Nexus devices for Verizon.)
Overall I'm happy with T-Mobile. And it was fantastic when I recently visited Japan and my phone actually worked. It was 2G speed only, but Google Maps worked great, Google Translate worked great, messaging worked great.
There are a few spots I have visited where a Verizon phone gets good signal and a T-Mobile phone doesn't work. They are few enough that I'm glad I made the switch.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
1, an aside: why does the Slashdot AI/GS* think "You may like to read" a year-old story about a shooting in relation to this article? ("10 Confirmed Dead In Shooting at Oregon's Umpqua Community College") Seriously, fuck that thing. It's USELESS.
2, back on topic, HELL NO. Why would I want to pay more for "unlimited" data that I will never use? I'm doing just fine with my cheaper, 2GB-per-line plan as it exists now.
* Artificial Intelligence/Genuine Stupidity
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
They put an American flag next to a Satellite avatar... like we need two avatars for ads now.
This is not some huge masterpiece plan. They are just saying hey, we want volume sales fuck the high price game.
But oh yeah in FBI Slashdot world this is a fucking genius brainstorm.
Right now I'm paying $200 with T-mobile for 5 lines all with unlimited data, 14Gb of tethering per line, and you unlimited tethering of video with Binge On active. I can turn off Binge On for our phones.
With the new plans, tethering is more expensive and none is included, you can't turn off Binge On, and it doesn't look like you have unlimited video tethering.
Limited bandwidth data for video is usually okay on the phone but Sling doesn't work reliably with it.
I'll be keeping my current plan.
Last time we had unlimited data plans, there were people who would tether hundreds of gigabytes a month ...
If, when the network became congested, the available bandwidth were fairly divided among the competing users, such usage would not be an issue. Everyone asking for less than their share would get all their data through at line rate, everyone asking for more would evenly divide the remainder. At times when the pipes were too clogged to handle it all, the "data hogs" would get the same data rate as everyone else trying to use the "Information Superhighway". They wouldn't degrade the other users' experience any more than any other user's traffic did. (It's just like the way a driver who likes to cruise flat-out at night doesn't end up going any faster than the rest of the traffic at rush hour.)
I used to wonder why it wasn't done that way. Then I get a job designing router chips, including the special-purpose coprocessors to handle bandwidth division.
It turns out that actually making fair division happen in real time requires enormous amounts of sideways communication between the states of the (otherwise independent) throttling mechanisms for each user, flow, etc. It's much easier to preset the limits and only adjust them occasionally. But that means the "data hogs" either get throttled or, when rush hour comes and they're still trying to pump lots of data, they clog the pipes. So the ISPs identify customers who use a lot of data in off hours and turn down their limits, to keep them from degrading things for everybody else. It's not good. It's not fair to those who are just trying to use the service that was advertised, or those who carefully do their data-hogging on off hours only. But it's about the best ISPs can do with the available tools.
I was starting to look into practical ways to "do it right". But the network equipment company downsized me before I'd gotten rolling on it. Now I'm fully employed doing other stuff. So somebody else will have to figure this out, and get it designed and deployed in a future equipment generation, or we'll keep having this problem.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Only problem I face is that T-Mobile's coverage where I live is beyond terrible. Verizon picks up literally everywhere I've been (at home in the USA).
Auto-pay penalty? No thanks. I detest the idea of any company taking a non-fixed amount of money from one of my accounts without my approval. I think this is a big mistake on their part- they are going to piss off a lot of people.
I remember the cable company's push to get everyone to pay $30 per month...years later $50 per month, now the Cable company's want everyone up to over $100 per month.
With the Cellular companies, up to 2000, they were pushing customers into the $50+ range per month for service, since that time they have been doing anything they can to get customers closer to the $100 per month level.
Notice that all the new "unlimited" (no such thing) plans start at either $60 or $70 per month minimum.
It is pathetic. And people will pay it, they always do.
Does not matter what they put in the contract, they all change at will anyway...
Love Cricket's $50 all you can eat plans, all inclusive, if you approach the limits, you do not get cut off, they just throttle you back...absolutely hate the throttling, but they all do it, even if they say they do not.
You Cable lovers need to get a router-firewall running dd-WRT, OpenWRT or Tomato firmware and see the truth, that 100% of Cable companies throttle regardless of what they say.
With dd-WRT, you see the entire pipe open at the start of the lying 'Speed Test' and the millisecond that speed test ends, they throttle your bandwith back to less than 200Kbps, usually as low as 150 Kbps.
So not surprised that cellular companies with these so-called unlimited plans are starting them out over $50 per month...duh moment there.
Anything to get your minimum monthly as high as possible while giving you as little real bandwidth/service as possible.
The song remains the same...
Yeah, I was almost going to switch but now they lost me because it will cost me more.
T-Mobile offered a weekly tariff with 2GB data (I think), which was great for tourists. Will that still be available?
With the new plan, we'd pay $160/month, and lose *all* tethering!! A terrible proposition.
Really, I'm very disappointed; this is the first t-mobile "new product" release that's clearly inferior to the plans they'd like to replace. And the lack of tethering is hidden in the fine print, too.